Facebook is the biggest social network on the internet today. With over 300 million users worldwide and at least 150 million logins each day, nothing comes close. Based on statistics found on their Press Releases, Facebook’s fastest growing demographic  is those 35 years old and above, making it the best place to reach people who you can easily convert to customers for your business. People know that you can use Facebook for traffic generation to your website but very few people have the correct means to do that.  You have a business running online and the more people you can get to view your website the more customers you can get.

Here are a few tips I have learned from experience and research throughout the time I have been on Facebook as just a social platform or as a place for traffic generation. There are a few ways you can advertise for free on using Facebook, here is a few ways:

1. Status Updates on Your Profile:
Whenever you update your status message on Facebook, your friends (in this case its the people you have added as friends on Facebook) can see it when they log in on the homepage stream. This may not have an impact as so big because you can only reach the number of friends you have and most likely only half of them will get to see your update because say for instance, I have 700 friends, if I log in, I can only see about 40 updates on my homepage. With 700 friends, there is a good chance that more than 40 of them will have an update each hour meaning unless am on Facebook the whole time, I will miss most of the updates. Again, consistent advertising on Facebook Status makes people loose interest because that is not what the Status update is meant for.

2. Facebook Groups
Facebook groups have been over used as a means of advertising by a lot of people although in my view, its not very effective. Groups allow administrators to send messages to uses directly into their inbox, users can reply to everyone and threads can continue endlessly. There are also discussions that are allowed on the groups page and there is a wall that user can post into.  Group advertising may not be very effective as only members interested in the groups can go to the groups homepage. A lot of people join groups that they never return to just because they were invited by a friend or the group had a catchy title.

3. Facebook Notes
Facebook allows you to write articles and post them on your profile, allowing you to tag friends which means your friends and their friends can view, comment and share the notes. This to me is a great way of spreading word on new things and it makes the network larger. Creatively written notes can really work to help you market your product or website.

4. Facebook Events
When you create a Facebook event, you can invite your friends and their friends can invite their friends. This means your event gets multi-level advertising from the list of your friends. This works but it takes a huge interest in the list of people to start spreading word about your event.

5. Facebook Pages
Ask me, I will tell you that this is the most effective tool on Facebook. When you create a page for your business or product, it allows members to become fans/supporters. Facebook pages allow unlimited number of fans and this means unlike friendships which are limited to 5000, you can keep close contact with your fans. The page now has a profile of its own with picture galleries, status updates, wall and almost all the features of the normal profile page. This means that if you have 30,000 fans and you update your status, the message is shown on your fan’s homepage. This gets a huge reaction and it translates to proper traffic. The fact that it allows you to stream updates into the fan’s inbox is an added advantage, you can send messages to all your fans as updates. It also allows members to post on your wall and you can discuss things just on the wall which is the most common way of communication on facebook.

6. Facebook Paid Ads
Facebook pay-per-click ads work more like Google Adwords although they are more specific on demographics. You can choose to target people aged 30-35 from Nairobi, specific to gender and interests. This makes it a huge value for money. Basically if you have money to spend on advertising, my advice is you spend it on Facebook.

In conclusion, Facebook can be a great source of traffic for your website or business, if you were to take advantage of all of the above factors, you will achieve great results. My advice before you pay for a Facebook ad, create a fan page first and advertise the page instead of advertising your external website directly. Below are a few reasons why I think this is more effective than direct advertising:

1. Facebook Pages are more like permanent advertisements because you keep your fans from the moment they join.
2. Its cheaper to advertise.
3. When you create a new fan, you create a connection that will allow you to be able to continuously communicate with your fans while if you advertise your website directly, one may click and if at the moment they are not interested, they will never remember the website to go back to it.
4. When a member becomes a fan of your page, all their friends can see it as part of the wall streams and that means that they can also get into it out of curiosity or interest.

Make your website work for you

Being a web developer for more than 8 years has taught me quite a number of things and given me some experiences that I am not sure I want to witness in the near future while at the same time its given me quite a lot to learn and use in the future. One of the biggest trends I have noticed is 1 year websites. These are owned by people who come up with an idea and someone gives them advise on how good it would be to have a website for their idea or business. The person looks for a web designer and gets a cheap website done (cheap is OK, we do not need to spend money where not necessary). The person does his business, say for instance, its an outside catering service. He gets business from people who know him and expands it through referrals. You get a lot of people attending events because they want to learn what the other person is doing so, the person gets more business from his good work.

3 months pass by and the person has never got a single business from the website, the only value in it is decoration of his business card and probably the use of branded email – which he could have paid much less for anyway. By this time, his excitement about the website is gone and he stops updating the site. 3 months later, his site is no longer appearing anywhere near the front page on search engines. At the end of it, a year goes and nothing comes off the website, yet the site needs some money to stay online for the second year. He needs to renew his domain name and hosting. Being a normal business person, he will start questioning if he still needs the website and to some point, he will even feel conned even by the idea of having the website. So most people let it go or just keep the domain for emails. And off goes another website that would have made a difference in business.

I will drop you a few tips on how to make your website work for you, directly or indirectly.

1. Have Proper Content
   If you manage to get a few people on your website, they are likely to send more people to it if you have informative content about your business or services. If you do not have the right content, people do not even return to the site.
   
2. Include Your Website in Your Branding
   This helps your site get noticed. Its the cheapest way of advertising anyway.
3. Advertise
   Let people know you exist, no one will think you do unless you tell them. Put a little effort and a little money into targeted advertising. With the presence of affordable pay per click advertising programs, you can afford to put out your word to the right people. With Adwords and Facebook advertising, you can choose demographics of the people your adverts reach, you can pick specific countries, ages, category of interests among other things. You only pay for people who actually visit your site.
   
4. Update Your Site Regularly
   When you have a section of the website that has regularly updated content, it makes it a reason for any users interested to keep coming back. When they come back, its means they will remember your site easily and for them to refer someone to it would be easier.
5. Online Newsletter
   Keep in touch with your visitors by offering them regular newsletter updates via email, simply have an opt in newsletter service on your site. I have recently visited a website that I saw 4 years ago because they sent me a newsletter. I ended up spending some cash on it.

With these and more tips that I will put up here soon, you will be seeing your website live longer than a year and with value for your business. Feel free to contact us for specialized consultancy on your website, whatever kind it is. Contact admin at majibu.com